Saturday, August 30, 2008

This is one of the reasons I am fascinated with Bonneville, stories like the one behind this car.

I don't know the guys that put this car on the salt.

I do know that this is not some old car brought back to life.

It was built in some guy's garage.

There aren't many parts you get to order on a project like this, so there is lots of time and sweat in that slippery belly tank shape.

I looked at construction pictures that show a background not too different from where you probably park your car at night. (Though there were a lot more bits of seventy year old cars in the background, more than might be stashed in your garage.)

So, it is the romantic story brought to life - a bunch of guys, buddies with a similar dream getting together a couple nights a week, building a race car.

Trying to go fast enought to catch up with the dream.

Trying to go faster than a bunch of other folks who were also holed up, doing the same thing for the previous year, trying to catch the same dream.

Friday, August 29, 2008

I am still fixated on how small these are in person. I mean they are big, don't get me wrong, but not really big. They are small enough to wrap your head around, small enough to feel pretty cramped inside. Kinda small.

Well, the big show was last night. The speech every talking head and pundit has been yapping about all week brought some climax to the DNC love-fest. It’s a lot of talking, a political convention. I had almost forgotten how much talking there was. The party rolled out everything they had; Kerry gave a speech that probably would have gotten him elected if given it when he was a candidate, Gore only made me drowsy this time and there was the Clinton double punch. Michelle Obama set the bar pretty high, early in the convention, most all of the professional talkers met the mark. Joe Biden did a fine job of introducing himself to the 95% of America who had no idea who Joe Biden was.Then there was the talking about the speeches. I largely tuned out for the post speech analysis, as I am fairly adept at forming my own opinions.

But that is all foreplay review, we all knew that penetrating psyche of undecided voters was the point of Barak Obama’s speech.

The speech itself was really a bit less than I was expecting. I appreciate that Obama and his writing team held back, though. Obama could have gone all in, attempted to make his own “Dream” speech or top the “Ask Not” rap. Going in that direction would have drawn hyper-analysis and opened the door for all manner of rock-star criticism from the right.

Instead we got a pretty straight nomination acceptance talk. It had plans, it had some numbers and it had some occasional fire. Enough fire to keep listeners engaged, not so much as to draw direct comparisons to some of the greatest, most historic speeches.

As for substance, well, it was a forty minute speech. I don’t expect any candidate to fully explain how they might fix healthcare, Social Security, global instability, receding economies, famine, women’s rights, genocides, wars and flagging national pride in forty minutes. Candidates have position papers to explain those details; most people don’t read position papers though. Obama touched on all of those topics, however briefly, usually including the word change in the sentence.

In a convention that was unprecedented in its scripting and level of production, the speech Barak Obama gave the headliner act. It was the big close on the sale.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Where the hell are the priorities of scientists today? I mean we don't have flying cars, outposts on the moon or even a truely practical jet pack - but now we have robot snakes?

I mean, sure, robot snakes are cool.

I'll probably track these folks down to see if they are interested in helping me take over the world, you know unless they want to do things the hard way.I am sure the whole thing got started in an effort to thwart my plans.

But couldn't they sort out the flying car thing before jumping into robot snakes?

Here, take a look. It is extra-terminator cool.

I have got to get some of this action. Perhaps the tails of the baboonbots could separate into robot snakes. That'd be sweet.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

This kind of picture and knowledge of a bulk Triumph motor purchase by the Crazy German - it really gets wheels turning.

This is the other end of the trike spectrum, when compared to the Roth style buggies. I generally swing more towards that crazy show trike end of things because there are a lot of really ugly three wheeled shit piles.

I have been feeling out of sorts lately. I couldn't quite figure out what it was that was bothering me.

Then it hit me, no Butter Cow!

I have been having intense cravings for all manner of dairy products. More than usual, at least. Extra cheese, ice cream, you name it.

Perhaps the Butter Cow is connecting with me on some subconscious level.

Typically, in the last few weeks of July, in the run up to the greatest state fair in the world, the Butter Cow starts to visit my dreams. As the days count down, to the opening of The Ohio State Fair, she becomes more bold and manifests her creamy cow-ness in daytime visions.

She tells me of all of the many delightful milk based delights that will be made available in the dairy exhibition area, at the fair. It isn't as though the Butter Cow actually speaks in these visions, that would be crazy. I, rather, infer from her lyrical MoooAhhh noises the message of the milk.

Not this year though. No creamy dreams, no milk-fat visions.Just the cravings.

Perhaps I have been removed from the heartland for too long? Maybe my great physical distance from Ohio prevents my direct Butter Cow communications? Has my psyche become lactose intolerant?

Need I return to Ohio to kneel before your refrigerated alter, Butter Cow?

Monday, August 25, 2008

I am a full-on political junkie. I read laws, I study electoral college maps, search out polls from obtuse factions of our political landscape. I am, usually, very vigorous in my election year observations, an active watch dog.

This part of the election cycle is my absolute least favorite. Frankly, I am depressed already. Not about anything happening in Denver or anything that might happen at the GOP sausagefest.

The whole deal is already done - we have gotten well into the great integrity sell-off portion of the campaign. McCain and Obama are happily glad handing contributors, softening positions, flipping on issues, finger pointing at each other and generally engaging in the very thing that they both so loudly claimed they would not sink to.

Both party machines are up and running. Cranking out the same shite we get fed every four years. Both campaigns have turned away from the very things that made them compelling.

Perhaps there will be some inspiring orration in the next two weeks. Hopefully, real dialog and debate will make it's way back into this election's circus tent.

Six months ago, I might have voted for either McCain or Obama. Eight months ago, they were the outsiders, the underdogs, the most interesting thing either party could possibly run.

The season when perfectly reasonable people sit on top of the most practical of go fast machinery - in the sole pursuit of a slip of paper that might say that they have gone faster than anybody else.

There are, of course, rules and classes and definitions and inspections and everything that is associated with any kind of organized racing. I am still compelled by the simple, individual nature of land speed racing. Ultimately, it is one person, piloting one machine, down a single black line - as fast as possible.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

I just found the re-release of this in the bins.It has been missing from the collection, if you don't count the two stretched out cassettes that are here somewhere. Worn out from too many listens.

I found it right around my birthday. Then I realized it was released in 1988. Twenty years ago. I guess it has been twenty years.

I remember first reading about Sonic Youth in Thrasher magazine, back when Thrasher was all pulp paper and art by Pusshead and Rob't Williams. There was a review of the Sister album, and it sounded cool, so I bought it.

I was a dorky skater kid in Ohio.

Looking back, that might have been where things turned. I realized that there was all of this cool stuff going on just over the horizon, because of the cultural telescopes like Thrasher and Sonic Youth.

Those cassettes and magazines were lifelines I suppose. I could pull a glimpse of another world, another conciousness into my head. I could push a little closer to some unknown, unreal universe.

I was still a dorky skater kid in Ohio. There was no metaphysical transformation. I kept growing up.And now it is two decades later. Youth and nostalgia are merging into one.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

He is some farmer dude from Utah.He has lived on the land his farm occupies since he was seven years old.

Recently, a row of McMansions went up along his property line.No doubt some tasteless douchebags wanted a pastoral landscape to raise their fat little shit kids in. We can guess that they used subprime loans to finance their way into this bucolic wonderland.Reportedly, the McMansion neighbors loved the view.

It seems that they were less enamored with the bugs associated with the horses. The manure smell was quite distasteful. They found the dust stirred up in normal farming activities to be most irritating.

So, farmer dude offered to split the cost of a fence in an effort to appease the suburban sprawling carpet baggers. The fence idea didn't fly.

Farmer dude decided that some junk cars he had left over from past demolition derbies and what not would, perhaps, make a great fence.

There it is, a fence made of cars. It is a shame that farmer dude didn't have more cars around, because three hardly seems like much fence.

See, it seems to me that if you move next to a farm - you don't get to complain about the flies and farm smells. You probably don't get to moan much about neighbors shooting off guns, riding dirtbikes in circles or blowing things up, either. If I had some acreage in the middle of nowhere, those would all be things I would damned well be doing. In my mind, that is why a person lives in the middle of BFE - to not have to deal with people, especially whiny pissants and atrocious pig fuckers.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008

Have you been over to this site yet? It is an ongoing list of stuff that white people like. It is pretty f'n funny.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

I suppose white people like lists of the things that they like, too...

It seems as though you can sorta score yourself, by looking through the list. I felt pretty damned pastey after looking through the complete list. I felt better about myself when I thought of all the white folks I know whose interests match the list much more closely.

I guess white people like feeling better about themselves in comparison to their peers. I sure do!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Sorry, it is not a pic of some of the work being done as part of my plan to take over the world. Though capturing the CERN facility is part of the plan, but you didn't hear that.

This project really seems like it should be happening here, in the good old US of A. I mean it has potential to destroy the world, it's frickin' huge and it looks like a Hollywood version of a big scary machine thing. Sounds pretty American, huh? A perfect project to locate out in some thousand acre gov't "testing" range.

Nope, the French and the Swiss have it going on this one.And it might destroy the world. Maybe.They say it's a longshot that it destroys the world.I am sure they have it all under control, for the moment.

I just hope they don't spill their coffee into the control panel when the baboonbots come charging in. I don't need that kind of mess.